John Cale — Guts (February 1977)°≡ Founding member of the Velvet Underground, then a producer, collaborator, solo artist, and soundtrack composer.°≡ OBE Birth name: John Davies CaleBorn: 9 March 1942, Garnant, Carmarthenshire, WalesLocation: UKAlbum release: February 1977Record Label: IslandDuration: 38:16Tracks:1. Guts 3:262. Mary Lou 2:473. Helen Of Troy 4:174. Pablo Picasso 3:215. Leaving It Up To You 4:306. Fear Is A Man's Best Friend 3:547. Gun 8:058. Dirtyass Rock 'n' Roll 4:429. Heartbreak Hotel 3:09Review by Dave Thompson, Allmusic.com°≡ Guts is a retrospective compilation album by John Cale, released by Island Records in February 1977. It is perhaps most notable for including the songs "Leaving It Up To You", which was deleted from Helen of Troy, and the previously unreleased "Mary Lou". It was compiled by Howard Thompson.°≡ Released in spring 1977, with John Cale back on the road and reveling in the controversy created by the chicken–beheading incident, Guts was a solid reminder of the three albums he cut for Island earlier in the decade — and which predicted the power and promise of punk with a passion that not one of the movement's other putative godfathers had ever truly communicated. Those original albums were already out of print at the time and, for an audience raised to expect outrage and violence, that may not have been a bad thing. Fear, Slow Dazzle, and Helen of Troy, after all, each packed their fair share of ballads and beauty, a happenstance that to punkier ears was akin to expecting the Stooges to play "No Fun" and getting "We Will Fall" instead. Guts cut away all of that, and diced instead into the soul of Cale's psychosis, from the grueling "Gun" to the turbulent "Fear" — still one of rock's most foreboding "ballads" — and onto what remain three of Cale's most legendary performances, a seething Quaalude drive through Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel," his hypnotic realignment of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso," and, edgiest of all, "Leaving It All up to You," a storm–tossed journey through the bowels of modern life crowned (as aghast period commentators never let listeners forget) by the anti–reassurance, "We could all feel safe/Like Sharon Tate." Its excellent track selection aside (only "Dirty Ass Rock and Roll" lets the side down), Guts distinguished itself further by extracting the Slow Dazzle outtake "Mary Lou" from the archive. But even without that bonus, the album emerged a best–of that actually lived up to its billing.Website: http://john-cale.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialJohnCalePersonal life:°≡ In 1968 John Cale married fashion designer Betsey Johnson. The couple divorced less than a year later.°≡ In 1971 Cale met Cynthia "Cindy" Wells, better known as Miss Cindy of the GTOs and they married soon afterward. Their marriage was rocky and they divorced in 1975.°≡ On 6 October 1981 Cale married his third wife, Risé Irushalmi, and they had one daughter together, Eden Myfanwy Cale, born 14 July 1985. They divorced in 1997.Studio albums:°≡ Vintage Violence (1970)°≡ The Academy in Peril (1972)°≡ Paris 1919 (1973)°≡ Fear (1974)°≡ Slow Dazzle (1975)°≡ Helen of Troy (1975)°≡ Honi Soit (1981)°≡ Music for a New Society (1982)°≡ Caribbean Sunset (1984)°≡ Artificial Intelligence (1985)°≡ Words for the Dying (1989)°≡ Walking on Locusts (1996)°≡ HoboSapiens (2003)°≡ blackAcetate (2005)°≡ Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood (2012)_____________________________________________________________